1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to blade drive devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a blade drive device for a camera includes: a board having an opening; a blade opening and closing the opening; and a drive source, such as an actuator, driving the blade (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-183372).
Such a blade drive device is often installed into a small device such as a mobile phone, and there is a demand for further downsizing the blade drive device. There is a demand not only for downsizing the blade drive device in a planar direction perpendicular to an optical axis but also for reducing the thickness in the optical axis direction.
However, since such a blade drive device includes various members such as a blade, a base board, and the like, made of synthetic resins, when reduced too much in thickness, each member is bended with ease. This may degrade handling ability of the blade drive device when it is assembled or installed into an external apparatus after its fabrication is completed. When the thickness of each member is increased, each member can be suppressed from bending, but the thickness of the blade drive device is increased, and thus the demand for reducing the thickness cannot be achieved.